I feel your repugnance at 'making' other humans work for your living because they have no choice.
But but but, this is capitalism.
People who accumulate money, tend to accumulate more. Those who earn and spend, don't.
I feel the same as you, and it is probably why I am still not rich. I really wish I could get over it, but it seems I am past saving.
Every time I see a multi-millionaire government appointed toad trying to sell time with the PM for £250k, I want to vomit on his head.
Oh well. Back to the telly.

Fascinating to see how a great investors mind works.
He says we are going through a long term deleveraging, and that the average of banks assets to equity is 15-1, higher in Europe. Anyone know what the long term average is? and where the figures are reported. Then we could possibly see how far we are into the process and when the banks are likely to start lending again.

Yep, you beat me to it.
It seems to me all the major players are leveraged to a single outlook ie.'the risk has been eliminated' and if anyone is allowed to go bankrupt the rest will go with them, because as has been said since, the letting go of Lehmans was the major mistake Paulson et al made. They at the time probably also thought 'it nets out to a small number'.

Still unsure, but the bit above is the important bit. It seems to me that the 3.2bn was paid out on that portion of the bonds that had their CAC's triggered. If it was to be paid out on all the bonds that were 'voluntarily' reduced in value, but had cds hedges, it would have been a great deal more.

Ok now I'm getting somewhere. Thanks.
In your example buying a swap in going long the price oil and selling vice versa, and only the difference gets paid out according to which direction it goes. So JS is exaggerating for effect.
Just one more question with regards to sovereign bond CDS.
The buyer of the swap is going long the bond and the seller is short, is that correct?

I get that by spreading the risk you can decrease the likelihood of one counterparty blowing up and causing ripple effects. What is unclear is how through this system risk gets eliminated.
For example:
Are you saying that if a total liability from CDS contracts, say Greece defaulting (ISDA notwithstanding,)was 100bn , then the total payout would be 100bn but split between all the counterparties such that none would renege on their contract.
Or are you saying once all the cross hedging is cancelled out then the net liability would be 5bn say, that would then be split between all parties.
If it is the former then the risk has not been eliminated only spread , if the latter it has almost vanished which to my mind is impossible, much like trying to destroy energy, it just shows up somewhere else in another form.
As I am a layman, perhaps the value of the risk is incorrect and it is only the 5bn and not the 100bn. Could you please clarify with an example Dr Bubb?

Forget JS for a moment and lets think about what you are actually saying.
A cds contract shifts the risk of default on to somebody else. They also hedge that risk and so on. Each party hedges risk such that if a credit event were to occur each counter party would pay the balance of the risk it had not hedged.
But what I want to know is , does the cash exist in the system to pay everyone off? If that is the case then it seems to me that almost all risk can be eliminated which is of course impossible.
Isn't saying it all nets out to a low number like saying 'don't worry about your parachute, we have all got an umbrellas'?